Cruelest "1" I've ever had

Semathi State is my new Kingdom Death solo settlement.

It has some extensive house rules and additions - for example, hunt events are in a deck of 118 cards. Also I'm trying out a house-ruled Protect the Young principle that allows a re-roll of Age story events and Insight & Bold epiphany results.

I took far too few notes on the progress of first nine full years.

I wanted to trigger society principle as quickly as possible, when I managed to roll twelve starting survivors.

Currently it's year 10 settlement phase, and I'm still struggling with it. Settlement has had absolutely terrible luck with Intimacy and settlement events. Hunts were exceptional and went like a breeze, and nemesis challenges turned out entirely fine. Butcher, Manhunter, Slenderman, Lonely Tree... none put a dent in the assets of Semathi State.

Sure many a survivor suffered crippling injuries. Manhunter level 1 gave me two survivors with broken back and one with destroyed genitals, for example.

I think a lion during year one or two hunt killed someone. That's it. There was a maximum of one additional dead survivor I may have forgotten about until the encounter with Slenderman on year 9. Yet death count was 8 before that encounter, which I think is quite impressive with Protect the Young life principle. For the most part house rule I had with it didn't affect things much. Less than six times it has turned an unfavorable result into a permanent stat boost, so I wouldn't say success during showdowns was because of this.

But yeah. First settlement event ever was Skull Eater. Which turned into a yearly killing spree. Two years in a row I also got Haunted settlement event, which forced me to kick a survivor out of colony.

Then a spiderling season had insane survivors killing humans instead of spiders, not to mention the Plague without having innovated Bloodletting. Along with at least three deaths during Intimacy, with not even once getting twins. I fought Spidicules twice and both times I scoured the silk nest with all survivors, not receiving +1 population. When I fought Flower Knight, I did not draw even one Warbling Bloom. Currently it is year 10, and I have drawn exactly two Love Juices. And I still have goddamn nine Broken Lanterns, which I have been tossing left and right in every opportunity. Three resources for a Mighty Strike? Broken lanterns! Scrap Hood Katars? Broken lanterns! Augury 1-3? Broken lanterns! Hilarious.

There were many interesting characters developing throughout the campaign, but one was above the rest - whose history I will repeat here on this very blog post.

Suneais, your legend shall not be forgotten.

She was a survivor of Butcher fight, and received free Axe proficiency from there - along with Butcher's axe.

Experimenting with lanterns gave her Red Fist secret fighting art, and Manhunter encounter gave her both Abyssal Sadist and Tough - yes, she dealt the killing blow. Manhunter gifted her with destroyed genitals, though. During next hunt she just grew important bits back by pulling off some dead weed from the ground.

By the age of three she was an axe specialist, having honed her skill with killing such worthy opponents as Butcher, Manhunter and Spidicules. Even her courage was legendary - by the age of four she had four dots. Bold story event was triggered in no other place than during showdown itself.

She dealt the killing blow to Flower Knight, taking its badge as a trophy.

Well, then there was this White Lion hunt that was a disgrace. So far below her level. I should have had the courage to hunt a level 2 beast, it would have been doable with those rolls.

Season of the Spiderling gave her some additional weapon proficiency. On year eight she had +4 permanents strength and +1 permanent evasion. During settlement event Hunt re-enactment Tough fighting art is replaced with Last Man Standing, which was a bit of an annoyance. But it was good to know that even settlement sees the light of hope in the form of invincibility.

But I'm hesitant to engage Slenderman. So some of the broken backed survivors eat a lonely fruit, and - look at Suneais. Single-handedly chopping down the tree.

She is only one dot away from Axe Mastery.

And yet I choose to take her to challenge Slenderman. A big risk, and had I known beforehand how Slenderman deals with Insanity, I would have probably left her to the settlement. But I didn't - and without earlier experience, Semathi State won Slenderman. Well no, not the settlement. Suneais did. Out of the 13 wounds it takes to kill a Slenderman, she alone did nine. She even critically hits Slenderman so that she gets +1 permanent evasion.

Her hunt experience is 6. Lantern year is 10. Suneais is an Axe Master.

Such feeling of triumph and success. I was pondering which monster I would tackle next. I was considering level 2 Phoenix or level 3 Screaming Antelope. Suneais had +4 permanent strenggth and +2 permanent evasion.

But hey, it's year 10. Before hunt commences, we have to take down this Manhunter again.

He does have some scary moves and I have to be cautious. Maybe I was a bit arrogant when I took two useless survivors along, who were destined to die at the end of settlement phase anyway, thanks to infection from plague.

Turned out I kind of wasn't. Turn after turn Suneais was dodging tombstone attacks and dealing a wound or two in.

Manhunter was also fixated on killing the intracranial hemorrhage survivor that had Cat's Eye Amulet. Eventually he managed to do this, but by then he only had one card left in AI deck.

Suneais, go and end his misery already. You're fully capable of this.

She has to draw hit location blindly because the Cat's Eye Amulet was gone.

Gritty Visage had this reflex where attacker takes automatic severe injury with +1 to the result.

Suneais deals the wound with no problem whatsoever.

I'm worried about the prospect of some crippling permanent injury. This is pretty much her only "weakness" - dealing damage so reliably. She had the equivalent of +5 evasion from stats and gear. She had Abyssal Sadist and Rawhide armor set on her. She had insanity of 14, more coming every moment. She was continuously maxed out with survival and settlement's limit of six, so she wasn't running out of opportunities to dodge, and still was able to surge every turn.

So it was the cruelest 1 I've ever rolled in this game. She had such an amazing future for her. At such level of performance survivors are usually nearing their retirement, but she was just beginning.

Furthermore, irony is apparent. Because had not the settlement celebrated her prowess two years before and removed Tough fighting art, she would have survived even this with only a couple bleed tokens. She had a stock of three Red Vials, so bleed tokens wouldn't have stopped her the least anyway.

Then Manhunter goes and butchers another survivor. Manhunter has no cards in his deck, but I'm left with just one survivor. The only fresh face I had in that fight. I could sense his trembling. Or was it me trembling?

Baledda had white lion coat, king spear, monster tooth necklace with affinity bonuses and a +1 strength token from Suneais' secret fighting art. If Baledda managed to hit and hit location was damageable, he'd need only 4+ to kill, as he was able to pounce and strike with king spear.

He scored the kill, but I just could not feel victorious. Suneais' swansong. First fight as fully grown axe master was where she died.

And suddenly looks like settlement is doomed. At least I have a Spear Master and the axe mastery innovation, but without Butcher's Axe that went down with Suneais, I'm left with Bone Axes. I will have to fight a level 2 monster, that's for sure. But. Now is a very good time for a pause from Kingdom Death.

Burk Reborn

The story of Boneyard settlement has continued with one full lantern year. And what a year it was.

Year six hunt was chosen to be Flower Knight, and hunting part consisted of Candice, Frampt, Jessie and... Burk.

Misadventures during hunt phase apparently were not enough. Acid rains were melting the faces off from survivors, Flesh Monolith was around scaring our miserable humans (not Burk, then), perhaps later causing Candice to get overloaded with grief in leg-breaking lengths.

To show his commitment to the future of the hunt, Burk tore off his waist cloth at forest gates. What a hero.

I have considered Flower Knight to be somewhat of an easy opponent. Well, not "easy" in the sense of just running through while reading a book. In my mind it has been nicely balanced in how it seems to drain all the resources survivors have without actually killing off anyone that easily. In this fight that all changed.

Burk manages to land Clawhead Arrow on the Knight, and Frampt had his trusty spear doing damage quite reliably. Sounds good so far, but he was the only one doing anything at all for the most part of this fight.

Early in the game Jessie had her spine broken, so she didn't have much else to do than use bandages.

Candice, while scoring hits well enough with her bare hands, just could not deal any damage. She would have scored wounds on 4+, and criticals on 7+. She rolled 1 or 2 for wounds, and this continued on and on until the very end of the game. Bad luck on her attacks was ridiculous - eventually she was scoring critical wounds on 3+, and yet did not manage a single wound.

When she started inflicting critical wounds on 2+, she started to get the job done.

A demoralizing prospect for the whole settlement was when Burk died to a major artery cut. He was the self-titled hope and future of settlement - now dead. Settlement lost Twilight Sword and Ancient Lantern as well. But then we did not know it was Burk's plan all along, something that he saw inevitable to happen...

Frampt also had his spine broken. Soon after Burk died, Candice received the Performance Anxiety disorder. It was the consequence Burk's spirit aiding her during the fight, I suppose. And she sure needed it, because after Frampt had his back wrecked, winning the fight relied pretty much (literally) on her hands.

There were some amazing moves on Flower Knights part, fairly epic. Especially when survivors somehow managed to not die to them. First, Flower Knight drags everyone into the Fairy Ring with trap card. Next happens this attack, that gains extra speed from survivors inside the ring, and every survivor who is damaged, gets knockback. First drag in, then punching everyone out again. This might have been some frustration on Knight's part, as it had been trying to drag somebody in multiple times during the fight with this attack that makes Flower Knight move outside of the ring - failing every time.

Frampt dies to bleeding tokens. There's only Jessie with her broken back and deaf Candice with broken arm and broken leg.

Survivors are victorious, but at what cost?

Settlement event was Silk Storm, so at least there was some respite.

There's three Love Juices in the settlement storage, and we had only four survivors alive. One with Performance Anxiety disorder, no less.

Samuel and Mal-Mal start to breed like rabbits - and very first result was a lantern 10 and a lantern 10.

Wow.

A savior with Survival of the Fittest principle.

Savior of Caratosis, the Avatar of Burk had entered the settlement. In the moment of direst of need. A spark of hope. But what kind of hope?

Remaining Love Juices give one extra population per potion, and both require a once-per-lifetime roll to be used. But while it is still no a healthy population, matters are no longer critical.

What to do when things go badly, but are not critical? Fight the Manhunter, of course.

That's where we'll be heading next.

Wish Boneyard some luck.

Baneful Forest

Played a 75 point game of Warmachine. My list was:


[Theme] Black Industries
Goreshade the Bastard [+27]
- Harrower [16]
- Malice [15]
- Nightwretch [0(7)]
- Ripjaw [0(7)]
- Seether [13]
- Slayer [10]
- The Withershadow Combine [9]
Aiakos, Scourge of the Meredius [4]

- Stalker [8]
Machine Wraith [2]
2x Necrotech [2]
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor [5]
2x Warwitch Siren [4]
Cephalyx Overlords [8]


Opponent had Exulon Thexus list with endless swarm of drudges. At a glance it's difficult to see which units are in question, so I won't try to piece this puzzle together from the few pictures I took. Non-cephalyx models were Alexia and the Risen plus a minimum unit of Forge Guard.

Cephalyx started. Being outnumbered like that is always oppressing, and here all of the enemy models would be able to punch fragile Cryxian heavy warjacks reliably.

In the picture I have, I have just lost Stalker who had managed to walk forward with Escort and then jump next to Exulon Thexus. I had figured that I probably needed to do something that might disrupt enemy battle plans. As a bonus the light warjack did some four or five points of damage to Thexus as well as tagging him with Grievous Wounds.

Thexus moved to use his feat in an attempt to score impressive amount of control points. This turned out to be just one - from my destroyed objective. Opponent forgot, and even more miraculously I remembered Seether had counter-charge. As drudges were flooding into the zones, Seether charged right back in. Three or four drudges were able to charge Seether but did not break it.

As I was probably going to lose attrition anyway, I had to take my chance at assassination. I had grand plans here - some model would kill Deathwalker and then Goreshade would charge in to one of the floating cephalyx models in the forest and turn it right back into Deathwalker so that Thexus would take -2 defense. Everything else went fine, except that when I checked the rules how to spawn Deathwalker I noticed that she replaces the destroyed model. And now the other cephalyx was in melee. I had planned on shooting it down with Hex Blast, but now I needed 13's to hit. I tried it anyway, and Goreshade missed Cephalyx. He hit Deathwalker, though. He boosted blast damage to the cephalyx and fortunately took it down with the blast. But no more Deathwalker.

Well, Goreshade used his feat and Tremulus came to offer them Puppet Master.

I got five Bane Warriors to charge Thexus, with one not receiving charge bonus.

I was blessed with enough 8's to hit for Banes to win the game.

First Star Realms (of the year)

Honestly I just wanted to have fourth blog entry in a row starting with the same word for no reason whatsoever.

Anyway, three player Star Realms was the last game we played during weekend. It's been quite a while since I played Star Realms last, but the mechanics were easy to pick up.

My gambit didn't pay off and as a result I came second. I didn't have all that great of a strategy. I tried to scrap all scouts and vipers from my deck and snatch the ships that gave extra life. Thought that might be viable in a multiplayer game. This time at least it wasn't, I fell too far behind in capability to deal damage.

First Magic Maze

For the first time up-to-date, I got to play the latest addition to my own board game collection - the Magic Maze.

Since the games play really fast, it's probably better to count games of Magic Maze as sessions rather than individual scenarios.

During the course of two sessions we managed to get to the scenario that implemented mage special ability. We tried it a few times, but could not pass it.

Now, I generally don't like games that rely on player reaction speed. But this game does it relatively well - to my personal preferences, that is. Limited player communication along with not-too-short game length works for me.

For some reason the game box is enormous. After plucking out the components from their sprues the game will fit in a Love Letter sized box, I believe. That way it will be easy and light-weight to carry as a side game when traveling.

First Red November

Last weekend I played a few board games while I was traveling.

First in line was Red November, a board game about drunk (soon to be, at least) gnomes in a submarine about to have a full system failure.

We played one round with three players.

Apparently difficulty scales with how many players there are - more players, more difficulty. There were quite a few close calls where gnomes could have died - most were related to being drunk and passing out in less than ideal situation - and had my gnome not succeeded in fixing temperature controls during last ten minutes of the game, all would have died.

My gnome was the only one who did not take even a sip of grog. Both other gnomes were passed out when the timer ran out. My gnome alone had to face the last minute horrors before being rescued.

First miniatures of 2018

My painting has been sorely lacking this year. Four months somehow passed without me finishing even one miniature.

But that's changed now, for I finished Manhunter for Kingdom Death.

Along came four monster fruits from Lonely Tree and a troll.

I don't know where I will be using troll, or even if it'll ever be used. Originally I think it was meant to be for Frostgrave, but I can't see a frostgrave campaign in near vicinity.

But hey, a troll!

There's also Paingiver Task Master somewhere in there, and Legends of Halaak for Skorne.

All of these miniatures are from a larger batch of models that I dipped. More to come at a later date.